We started teaching Supergirl sign language a week ago. Sign language in general has always interested me, I’ve always insisted that she will be at least bilingual and when I noticed a baby sign language book on Amazon, it sealed the deal for me. I think it’s an amazing asset to have and something we can learn together with the aim of hopefully progressing onwards to it becoming her first second language.
The book, although filled with very solid basics, did not impress me with its selection of words. Yes, naming animals are important, but “bird”, “dog”, “elephant” and “cat” are not words I use every day. Of course I then downloaded an iPad app which had a few more words. Suddenly finding myself paying attention to the words I do use, I was surprised by which words are heard in my house the most.
There’s the regular expected ones that I could find in the book, “food”, “drink”, “milk”, “nappy”, “bath”, “cat”, “fish” (so yes, I guess animals do make a lot of sense to have in a first words book), “bed”, “book”, “drive”, “please”, “thank you”, “bye bye”, “mommy”, “daddy”, “ball”, “car”.
Then there were the regular once I expected to find (some I found on the iPad app, but most I’m still sourcing from youtube): “hello”, “wait”, “all done”, “be patient”, “shhhhh”, “walk”, “calm down”, “toys”, “medicine”, “push chair”, “coat”, “up”.
And then there are the words that I didn’t realise we used multiple times a day: “twit tv”, “podcast”, “ipad”, “netbook”, “computer”, “zombie”, “controller”, “console”, “game”, “murloc”, “inhaler”, “online”, “skype”, “webcam”, “amazon”, “Bob”.
Do the words we use define us? In a lot of ways, yes they do. It’s hard work having a kid, harder work having a kid with health issues that doesn’t sleep and then I go and make it even harder by insisting that on top of the usual baby routine, we also have a clued in tech oriented baby that uses sign language. I suspect we will start on the alphabet and spelling soon, or knowing my house, we’ll make up our own signs for the words we love that doesn’t exist.
It’s been a week of milestones, first signs being used (food, drink, hello, bye-bye, shhhh, no and yes), first tooth, first steps (we’re up to three yay), first play on the swings and slide in the park, vocabulary crossed the dozen words benchmark and has finally moved past just the naming process to include words like “up” and “waiting”; well “aiting” at least. Will we be able to keep up with the signs? I really hope so, it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever tried to do.
